jealous woman is a more deadly poison than a mad
dog's tooth. It seems his sleep was hindered by your railing; no wonder
that his head is light: and his meat was sauced with your upbraidings;
unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown him into this
fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your brawls; being debarred
from the enjoyment of society and recreation, what could ensue but dull
melancholy and comfortless despair? The consequence is then, that your
jealous fits have made your husband mad."

Luciana would have excused her sister, saying, she always reprehended
her husband mildly; and she said to her sister, "Why do you hear these
rebukes without answering them?" But the abbess had made her so plainly
perceive her fault, that she could only answer, "She has betrayed me to
my own reproof."

Adriana, though ashamed of her own conduct, still insisted on having her
husband delivered up to her; but the abbess would suffer no person to
enter her house, nor would she deliver up this unhappy man to the care
of the jealous wife, determining herself to use gentle means for his
recovery, and she retired into her house again, and ordered her gates to
be shut against them.

During the course of this eventful day, in which so many errors had
happened from the likeness the twin brothers bore to each other, old
AEgeon's day of grace was passing away, it being now near sunset; and at
sunset he was doomed to die, if he could not pay the money.

The place of his execution was near this convent, and here he arrived
just as the abbess retired into the convent; the duke attending in
person, that if any offered to pay the money, he might be present to
pardon him.

Adriana stopped this melancholy procession, and cried out to the duke
for justice, telling him that the abbess had refused to deliver up her
lunatic husband to her care. While she was speaking, her real husband
and his servant Dromio, who had got loose, came before the duke to
demand justice, complaining that his wife had confined him on a false
charge of lunacy; and telling in what manner he had broken his bands,
and eluded the vigilance of his keepers. Adriana was strangely surprised
to see her husband, when she thought he had been within the convent.

AEgeon, seeing his son, concluded this was the son who had left him to go
in search of his mother and his brother; and he felt secure that this
dear son would readily pay the money demanded for his ransom